Sony XS-W1620 Speaker Upgrade

 

So here we are again kiddo's. Once more I have ordered speakers from crutchfield.com for installation in my Honda Insight. However, this time there was one little catch.....most honda insights DON'T come standard with rear speakers installed. So I also had to order a rear speaker kit from hparts.com. Over all the installation went pretty darn smooth, and only took me about 1hour and 45 minutes to do...even in 92 degree weather.

Speaker specs:

* H.O.P. woofer
* paper cone tweeter
* frequency response 30-25,000 Hz
* power range 2-50 watts RMS
* peak power handling 160 watts
* sensitivity 91 dB
* top-mount depth 1-3/4"

 

The Installation:

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I was originally going to remove the seats, in order to have more room, but since I couldn't get the bolts to turn I settled with removing the seat belt with a 14mm socket and just pusing the seat forward. Also the kit that came from hparts.com didn't have ANY instructions (thank god its pretty self apparent) but lastly there's a shot of the included template from making the cut's. You just flip it over depending on what side your on.

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Here you can see i've made my first marking's, and have decided to start ripping out the carpeting. Its pretty straight forward, but I do recommend using a pair of scissors for cutting the white stuffing. My razor blade didn't have much luck going thru it. Next I just popped out the white plastic filler panel (which convienently has the speaker plug attached to it) and then cut off the wiring harness on the end. Now I faced a little dilemma here since I didn't know what was positive or negative, so I took an old stock speaker (from the front) down stairs to my lab and used my 12volt power supply figure out what was what (little trick Ilearned while working at radio shack). So the final results are:

Left Speaker: B w/ white stripe = Pos, B w/ bl stripe = Neg

Right Speaker: Pink (wtf? pink?) = Pos, Bl w/ yellow stripe = Neg

Then I snapped the 3 plastic clips into place. And the last 2 pics are after I attached some wire leads to the factory wiring using some heat shrink tubing.

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Lastly I just held the speaker shroud in place, while GENTLY tighening the 3 screws (theycame with the hparts kit, 6 total, 3 for each side), and VOILA! you have a beautiful installed speaker. One word of advice; due to the strange angle and placement of the screws be CAREFULL when tighening them, you DON'T want to slip and poke a hole thru your new shiney speaker! The last pic is just me being anal, apparently the template isn't the best thing to follow when cutting.

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Here's the same story again, but on the right side. This time I didn't follow the template exactly, but rather I drew the circle about 1 cm smaller. It seemed to work out a lot better, and there weren't any gaps in the carpeting.

 

Conclusion:

I know there are some people who don't like the sound that comes from the Insight's rear speaker placement, but I am very happy with the results, and the increased "bass" given by them. Hehe, my mirror shake now, and I am sooooo pathetically happy about that :-P

 

later,